This digression is necessary, because, although the practical working of such beliefs as these may perplex us, the fact remains that they were shared in Palestine. The petty rulers in the Amarna letters thoroughly recognise the divine nature of the king who was a god and had the god for his father (see p. 78 _sq._). Later, when Palestine had its {64} own king, the 'Lord's anointed' was almost as the deity himself (Ex. xxii. 28, cp. 2 Sam. xiv. 17); king and cult were one (Hos. iii. 4), and the king's death could be regarded as the extinction of the nation's lamp (2 Sam. xxi. 17). Not to mention other details, the Messianic ideals of the divinely-begotten son and of the ruler whose origin was of aforetime preserve the inveterate belief in the divine ancestry of rulers, an honour which in other lands continued to be conferred upon rather than claimed by them. +Recognised gods.+--It is very important to find that the representatives or possessors of divine powers are the worshippers of their deity in life and his inferiors in death. The recognised gods have their definite circles of clients, and if their human representatives are subsequently worshipped or even deified, this is a not unnatural development, especially as the official deities are apt to be at the mercy of political and religious changes. The older gods can be degraded and sink to the rank of demons (from newer stand-points), but the petty deities and the lower supernatural beings are as little influenced by external vicissitudes as the lower ranks of humanity with whom they always stand in closer relationship. {65} Their persistence in popular belief is as typical as the descent of the more august beings, although even the latter are understood to retain an influence which those of more recent introduction have not yet acquired or are unable to exert. While the general fundamental conceptions remain virtually unchanged, they are shaped by the social and political institutions, for religious and political life formed part of the same social organism. {66} CHAPTER VI THE GODS